


star to every wandering bark

by damnromulans (beastofaburden)



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: 5 Things, Angst, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-03
Updated: 2012-10-03
Packaged: 2017-11-15 13:17:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/527729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beastofaburden/pseuds/damnromulans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Jim Kirk got Shakespearean, and one time he didn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	star to every wandering bark

**Sonnet 50**  
 _The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,_  
 _Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,_  
 _As if by some instinct the wretch did know_  
 _His rider loved not speed being made from thee._

The afternoon Jim gets his bike, he rides and rides until he almost wears the power cell out.

He sails down highways and skirts the edge of the gorge. He cuts a swathe through a field of wheat. It’s fast – he feels weightless. In fact, he stops for nearly nothing and no one for hours, not until an unwelcome thought crawls up his spine and refuses to just go away like a good little motherfucker.

Maybe this is what it felt like.

He brakes hard. The jolt sends him onto his haunches as he grinds to a halt, almost thrown off the bike head first. God, he can see it now, eighteen years ago today, his father careering into the black and flying forward with a jolt and still loving his wife and his son all the while because that was all he had. For the briefest of moments, Jim was his father’s everything.

There’s dust in his eyes. He lets it sting, lets them fill with tears. The hurt pulls him back to earth and he’s thankful for it. 

He drives on.

**Sonnet 129**  
 _Is lust in action, and, till action, lust_  
 _Is perjured, murd’rous, bloody, full of blame_  
…  
 _Mad in pursuit, and in possession so_  
 _Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme_

He didn’t want it to happen like this, but it did, and it is, and Bones is tugging at his shirt and kissing him so intently that he can’t find it in his pathetic whore heart to stop himself grabbing at hips and gasping a little when he’s touched there and he never ever wanted so much so suddenly but then there was Pike and a shell in a shipyard and here he is now trying to make something of himself and he’s drunk but it’s okay because he has warmth and arms holding him up and a real honest to God chance and right now it just feels like it’s incarnate in this man his friend his best friend his Oh God Bones please.

**Sonnet 120**  
 _But that my trespass now becomes a fee;  
Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me._

They fight. They fight so fucking much, Jim really has no idea how they haven’t run out of things to fight about. That being said, it provides a handy barometer for their friendship.

Because somehow, amazingly, that’s still what it is. Sure, there was a fight the morning after that night ( _Jim, I can’t believe you’re hiding my fucking boxers, I have a clinic shift in twenty minutes you fucking cretin and you did not just throw them out the window_ ), and there were some more fights in the days following, when they were getting their footing and figuring out how they were meant to work now.

But then they just… do. A week after became a month, a semester, a year after that night. The fights become about vegetables at meals, or why Bones wouldn’t tell him Uhura’s first name, or why couldn’t he get some bedside manner like a normal doctor _hey, hyposprays aren’t meant to fucking hurt, you dick!_

Jim has gone far beyond the point of pretending that it’s not insanely fun to press different combinations of Bones’ buttons and see what happens. 

“You have a language of insults,” Gaila says to him in the mess one day, twirling spaghetti on her fork. “Cursing and insults. Tone is measured in exasperation. It’s as intricate as Vulcan, and rude as Klingon.” 

“That literally sounds like the worst thing ever.”

“Maybe it is,” she shrugs. “But it’s yours.”

He plucks a tomato from her plate and tries to ignore the way his thoughts stutter over those words. There’s the other thing, in amongst the fighting, where Jim really hasn’t quite recovered from how perfect Bones’ lips felt or how he looked when he came or just how right it felt to be with him like that. But it’s okay. He’s good. He deflects, second nature, doesn’t dwell.

“Well, feel free to borrow my supremely awesome language any time you like.”

Without batting an eye, Gaila throws back an exceptionally obscene Orion phrase and Jim’s laugh echoes in the lunchtime din and that’s the end of that.

**Sonnet 116**  
 _Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,_  
 _But bears it out even to the edge of doom._  
 _If this be error and upon me proved,_  
 _I never writ, nor no man ever loved._

Jim tosses the PADD to the floor next to him. He stretches out like a starfish on the carpet, clenches, unclenches, clenches his fists in the carpet.

Sometimes, he forgets; loses himself in the sea of red, the tide of best and brightest, and forgets that he’s really not any less of a fuck-up than he was, just cleaned up with enough of a spit-shine to get through the day.

He shouldn’t have failed. Three years, an impossible course load and every eye in the Academy on him, and he’s never failed anything… let alone twice. The Unbeatable Exam should have been another notch in his belt. He had a plan for his second attempt, Christ, he kept it up for six fucking hours before the Warbirds took them down!

And wasn’t that just the best part, a head on collision, fake explosions going off and Jim thrown out of the captain’s chair like doll. The sting of loss is keen. He feels it right down to his bones…

The chime sounds. Speaking of.

“It’s open.”

Bones props himself against the bed next to Jim. He looks positively haggard, probably had to check in at the clinic before getting a chance to wind down from the six hour sim.

Jim laughs in the back of his throat. He shakes his head when a questioning eyebrow goes up.

“It’s just… ‘Bones the Helmsman.’ I remember when you couldn’t so much look at a sim without reaching for your flask.”

“Shut up Jim. You asked, and I needed the sim credit.” 

Instinctively, he knows that that’s all he’s going to get out of Bones on the matter without expending energy he really doesn’t have on a verbal sparring match. The truth it is, then.

“Sorry I got you fake-killed.”

“I figure we’re even on that front.”

“I’m gonna beat it, though. I will. And I’ll need a helmsman for when I do.”

Bones’ low chuckle glides over Jim, coats him in comfort and tamps down the anger and shame and indignation that’s been bubbling in his stomach since the sim. No effort; no questions. Just an “Aye aye, Captain,” and a gentle ruffle of his hair.

Later that night, Jim wakes up to the thought that he might not be on the same ship, or planet, or in the same fucking system as Bones when they finish up next semester. That if his captain gets cornered on the edge of the neutral zone, or if he does, or if any other number of fucked up things happens out there… that’s just it.

_“Sweetheart, can you hear me?”_

_“George?”_

_“I love you so much. I love y-”_

He doesn’t sleep a wink after that.

**Sonnet 66**  
 _And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,_  
 _And simple truth miscalled simplicity_  
 _And captive good attending captain ill._  
 _Tired from all these, from these I would be gone,_  
 _Save that, to die, I leave my love alone._

There’s a moment, when Jim’s leaning on the doorjamb of Bones’ office and he thinks of truths. The sun goes up and the sun goes down, half the admiralty hates him, the Earth is still here, and Leonard H. McCoy is the CMO of the U.S.S. Enterprise.

Jim tries not to dwell on the fact that Bones is actually getting away from Medical early (they’re dead, Jim) and instead watches Bones’ shoulders bunch in his black undershirt as he pulls off his blues.

“How’d it go?”

“Repairs are done. We're good to go.” One week, seven inconsequential days and Jim would go from deadbeat Jim to Captain James T. Kirk, responsible for a glistening hull and the hundreds of souls therein, for the hope of everyone in the Federation, all looking up.

_They can punch a hole in our Bay, but not in our resolve _, Pike said.__

_’Cause resolve did a whole lot to help Vulcan._

“Hey.” He must have been thinking too hard again because Bones is in front of him now, afternoon sun shining in through his window and God, it aches just a bit to even look at him. He looks almost like he did in the hangar; there’s worry and sympathy and unreserved care mixed up in hazel. 

Jim’s so used to being left behind.

“You okay?”

He reaches out, cups Bones’ cheek in his hand, soft, revenant. He wants, but he’s tired, and even if this is all he’s allowed to take it will be enough. He will make it be enough.

“’M ready for home,” he murmurs, rubbing circles with his thumb.

Bones reaches up and places his hand over Jim’s, gently laces their fingers together. There’s no urgency, no questions. There’s no sudden flush of emotion within Jim. There’s nothing he could feel for this man, in this moment, that’s more than what he already does.

Bones tilts his head. The brush of lips against the inside of his wrist is barely there, but the subsequent curl of Bones’ smile against his skin makes him think that yes, he is so, so ready for this, for home.

~

**Sonnet 105**  
 _Fair, kind, and true, have often lived alone,  
Which three till now, never kept seat in one._

McCoy finds the book at the bottom of a stack of PADDs on Jim’s bedside table. He doesn’t know where Jim’s found time to read; he’s barely seen him at all since they got back, what with meetings, reports, and everyone wanting a piece of Captain Kirk. He hadn’t been expecting him at the hospital yesterday. Hadn’t expected…

Jim snuffles against his chest, tightens his arm around McCoy’s waist. McCoy feels a little flush at the thought that he’d managed to get him to sleep, at least.

He hasn’t seen a real book in months, and savours the feel of thumbing through the pages lazily. He’s never been one for poetry, never been a man of fancy words and pretty turns of phrase. Actions speak louder, anyway. It doesn’t surprise him that Jim’s a Shakespeare fan, though. Probably never even needed the SparkPADD guide.

It takes a little while before he feels the prickle of interested eyes.

“I found it when I was trying to pack. Shift up.” Jim gently pries the book from McCoy whilst he settles himself against the headboard, settles himself in McCoy’s lap once he’s comfy. He’s so close when he speaks and McCoy revels in the vibration of Jim’s morning voice, all quiet, all his.

“I like this one.” He hasn’t turned the page from when McCoy gave it to him, must be talking about the sonnet McCoy opened it to. “To one, of one, still such, and ever so.” Murmurs, flicks his eyes up at McCoy’s face in what he would call uncertainty if it wasn’t Jim fucking Kirk sitting in his lap. 

He’s not having any of it. There’s a lot to be unsure about, now, but Jim was nothing but certain yesterday afternoon, nothing but certain when he was arching and crying out beneath McCoy yesterday night, and he’ll be damned if he’s the cause of any doubt in Jim now.

There’s really nothing else to be done except pull him in for a kiss, soft and slow like the grey morning. McCoy wants to kiss Jim like he deserves to be kissed, like he’s always wanted to, just the right amount of hot and sweet but all love, always.

He presses words into Jim, “I’m sorry I didn’t…” _see, know, figure it out, this thing that I should’ve picked up years ago because it’s my job to know you, kid._

Jim just shakes his head and repeats “Still such and ever so,” seals it with another kiss. There is no need for words after that, because he is a sonnet, this boy, this man, twisting, rhythmic and utterly beautiful. This is all the poetry he needs.


End file.
